Carbon dioxide and glycerol are inexpensive, abundant, and renewable carbon feedstocks for chemical manufacture. In principle, they may be combined to give various glycerol carbonates, thereby converting two waste streams into valuable materials.Glycidol is attractive too. Suitably protected, it participates in the conventional CO2-epoxide copolymerization to give poly(1,2-glycerol carbonate) homo- or copolymers. With the hydroxy groups restored by deprotection, such polymers are more hydrophilic, and they may undergo post-polymerization modifications (below).1,2-Glycerol carbonate is reportedly decarboxylated to glycidol by acid or base catalysts. Anticipating increasing interest, we studied the pathways for both base- and acid-catalyzed decarboxylation reactions using computational methods (CBS-QB3(+)), and will discuss our findings. Our results will hopefully lead to milder and more energy-efficient decarboxylation processes that we are exploring in the laboratory.References 1. Darensbourg, D. J.; Yeung, A. D. Green Chem. 2013  , submitted.

Kinetics and thermodynamics of the decarboxylation of glycerol carbonate to produce glycidol: Computational insights

247th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.